


The Dead, Resurrected

by avulle



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, Gen, References to Past Child Abuse, S5 spoilers, Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra)'s A+ Parenting, like hella, redemption? of Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24475000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avulle/pseuds/avulle
Summary: Desperate for any way to get his wife back, Micah somehow brings Shadow Weaver back from the dead.Adora and Catra are left to deal with the consequences.
Relationships: Adora & Catra & Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Angella/Micah (She-Ra), Micah & Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 164





	The Dead, Resurrected

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was originally just supposed to be about Micah’s quest to bring Angella back.
> 
> But uhh, this happened instead. I couldn’t find anything interesting to do with Micah, but found no end to the interesting things to do with Shadow-Weaver, Adora, and Catra. Also, like, this seems like the wrong fandom to write a fic about a dude's edge-y quest to save his wife's life.
> 
> My personal headcanon is that Shadow Weaver was emotionally but never physically abusive. See also: just 'cause they didn't touch you doesn't mean they didn't fuck you up.
> 
> Never thought I’d end up writing an abuser’s redemption arc, but here we are.
> 
> S5 Spoilers, watch out!

There is a chill in the air.

A bitter, freezing chill, like the endless darkness of the Etheria’s old starless sky, that promises to freeze her, and never let her feel warm again.

Adora shivers, wipes the now cold sweat from her brow.

It’s just Micah.

He has… some of the shadows, that used to wrap around Shadow Weaver.

Whatever it was that touched her touched him, too.

The black shadows he used, when he had been under Hordak Prime’s control.

The black shadows he had used to swallow an entire battleship, when it had come into Etheria’s orbit, and fired upon Brightmoon.

It’s just Micah.

She hasn’t seen him in close to a month.

Glimmer’s been going crazy with worry.

She takes a breath, turns, and—

“Hello, Adora.”

A voice like ice on a chalkboard.

Adora’s breath leaves her in a rush.

“It’s so good to see you again,” Shadow Weaver says, and, without her mask, Adora can see her smile.

Under that gaze, under that smile, it’s like Adora is five again, hiding under her bedsheets as Shadow Weaver looms over her.

_ Adora, I thought better of you _ .

_ You can be better than this, can’t you? _

“Light Spinner!”

Adora blinks and finds Micah suddenly at Shadow Weaver’s side.

He takes her arm in his, pulls her from Adora.

“We talked about this,” he says.

“ _ You _ talked about this,” she says sharply, shadow magic welling up beneath his hand, and allowing her to pull her hand free. “How could I come back and not come to see my… Adora?”

She reaches out for Adora, and Adora flinches away from her hand before it can touch her.

Shadow Weaver freezes, hand frozen where Adora’s cheek had been.

“Adora,” she says, her voice, almost.

Hurt.

Micah takes Shadow Weaver’s wrist, and Shadow Weaver lets him lower it.

“I’m so sorry,” Micah says. “I… There was no other way.”

“Yo idiot, what are you—“

Out of the corner of her eye, Adora sees Catra stop in her tracks, as her jaw falls open, and her eyes widen.

Shadow Weaver turns to Catra, and smiles.

“Hello, Catra.”

Catra staggers back like she’s been physically struck.

“That’s enough,” Micah says, and they vanish in a twist of shadows.

Catra falls to her knees, and Adora rushes to her side.

“What?” Catra asks, staring down first at her claws, and then up at Adora. “But she’s—” she coughs. “But she’s dead.”

Adora opens her lips to say something, anything.

But finds nothing.

“She was dead.” Catra drops her head into her hands, and Adora wraps her arms around Catra’s shoulders as they begin to shake.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” Glimmer says, coming to them in their room, not longer after.

“I didn’t know.”

After her comes Micah, alone.

Not for her.

For Catra.

He kneels before her.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Catra looks down at him, her eyes still a little distant, her voice still a little raw.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

He smiles, a little ruefully, shadows twisting in the corner of his eyes.

“Because you would have tried to stop me,” he says, his words like a bucket of ice water straight down Adora’s spine.

Shadow Weaver does not follow him.

Not that day.

Not the next.

Not the day after that.

Why now?

Now that Catra and Adora had finally managed to forget her.

It is a week before Adora learns that Shadow Weaver has taken up residence in the Eastern Gardens.

The Eastern Gardens no one had ever been able to prune her purple-flowering black vines out of.

Late at night, Adora wanders through the castle, into the east wing, and out to a balcony that stares down upon Shadow Weaver’s gardens.

Sometimes she sees Shadow Weaver.

Maskless.

Her scars bared to the air.

Tending her twisted plants, in the dark.

Castaspella comes to the castle, not too long after that.

“What have you done?” she says to Micah, in the courtyard, for them all to hear.

“What I had to,” he says.

“What you had to? The world was better with her dead!”

There is silence.

The shadows of the courtyard twist, and Adora can see her scarred face in the shadows.

“You wouldn’t help me,” Micah finally says. “And I knew she would.”

“You—” Castaspells snarls. “You want to open a hole in the universe! You want to open a hole in the universe Angella sacrificed herself to close!”

Micah presses his lips together.

“I can save her,” he says.

“It’s forbidden—”

“Who cares!”

“Don’t you remember the last time you dabbled in the forbidden arts?”

Silence.

Another night, above the Shadow Weaver’s gardens.

“Adora,” she says to the night, voice only barely loud enough for Adora to hear. “How long are you going to hide?”

Slowly, Adora steps forward, and Shadow Weaver’s face turns up towards her.

“Aren’t you going to come down?”

Adora calls the Sword of Greyskull into her hand, and then leaps from the balcony.

She crashes down onto the ground before Shadow Weaver, Shadow Weaver’s form so small before her.

“Adora,” Shadow Weaver says. “You were never scared of me.”

_ You _ .

Adora’s body shakes, and her sword vanishes from her hand, dropping them both into darkness.

“No,” Adora agrees. “But maybe, since you died, I’ve learned the kind of person you were.”

Shadow Weaver’s confident smile slips.

“If I had listened to you, I would have died in the core. Is that—”

Adora hesitates.

“Is that what you wanted?”

Catra.

Catra has told her about how Shadow Weaver always treated her.

Her, and not Adora.

Adora’s had the time, since the end of the war, to read about all that Shadow Weaver did.

But.

Adora doesn’t want to talk to her about that.

“No,” Shadow Weaver says, turning away. “I never wanted you to die.”

She walks to the wall of the black vines, and begins to prune them.

“You just wanted to erase my memories, torture my friends, burn this whole planet to the ground.”

Silence.

“I—”

Hesitation.

Silence.

Adora swallows, and looks away from Shadow Weaver’s back.

“I met my mother,” Adora says, to the wall. “On a planet named Eternia.”

“Did you?” Shadow Weaver asks, voice neutral.

“She was  _ nothing like you _ .”

Silence.

Hesitation.

“No,” Shadow Weaver finally says. “I can’t imagine she was.”

“I have a brother, too. A father.”

Shadow Weaver’s arms begin to move again.

Snip-snipping away at her black vines.

“King and Queen and Prince and they were soft and kind and they were—”

Adora feels stupid tears well up in her eyes.

“They were nothing like you.”

Shadow Weaver’s hands still, and she turns back to Adora.

Adora rubs angrily at her eyes.

“Why did you do it? Why did you hurt Catra, why didn’t you hurt me? Why didn’t you stop Hordak? Why did you lie to us? Why did you teach us to do nothing but kill? Shadow Weaver why—”

Adora’s tears choke out her words, and she scrubs angrily at her eyes to no avail.

Shadow Weaver oozes towards her until they are face to face, and it is so bizarre to be able to see emotion written on her face, when all she’s used to is a mask.

And the emotion she sees there is love.

Shadow Weaver’s looking at her like she loves her, even though if Adora had never come to Brightmoon, she never would have understood it.

Because she had never received it.

How dare she.

_ You’re welcome? _

How—

Shadow Weaver’s hand touches her cheek, and Adora strikes out at her before she realizes what she’s doing.

Shadow Weaver is literally thrown the air, and she crashes into her blacks vines with a crash, her face contorting in pain as she falls to the ground.

Adora can do nothing but look at her hand before her in silent horror as if it belongs to someone else as Shadow Weaver crumbles to the ground.

Slowly, she raises her gaze to Shadow Weaver, slowly, trying to push herself to her hands and knees.

Her black cloak is stained with pinpoints of red, and—

_ No no no _ .

She-Ra’s sword materializes in her hand as she rushes to Shadow Weaver’s side.

“I’m sorry,” she says, rolling Shadow Weaver onto her back and letting She-Ra’s magic flow through them both. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Shadow Weaver’s lips twist into a pained smile.

“Why apologize? Isn’t this what you always wanted to do? Punish me for my—”

“No,” Adora says, as She-Ra’s magic dribbles out of her, and the pain clears from Shadow Weaver’s face. “No, I’m—”

The  _ better than you _ catches in her throat, because.

Because look at what she did.

Shadow Weaver’s hand slowly raises her hand to her face, and this time Adora just closes her eyes against it.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Adora says, closing her eyes, as tears begin to leak from her eyes. “It was wrong.”

She takes a breath.

“You were a terrible mother, and you’re a bad person, but—”

Adora opens her eyes, and looks down into Shadow Weaver’s.

“I’m so, so glad you’re not dead.”

She pulls Shadow Weaver to her chest, and buries her face in the crook of Shadow Weaver’s neck as she cries.

Shadow Weaver’s silence is deafening between them, and Adora slowly releases her.

When she does, Shadow Weaver stands, and Adora looks up at her, backlit by the moon, as massive and faceless as she always has been.

“I—”

Silence.

Hesitation.

“I’m glad you survived, Adora. I always knew you could do it.”

Adora buries her head in her hands, and weeps.

After that, Adora does not start regularly visiting Shadow Weaver, but when she goes to see her, she doesn’t always stay hidden, either.

One night, when she is hidden, she hears Shadow Weaver and Micah.

“Did you really think you could do this? I tried for  _ thirty years _ .”

“I can do this!”

“When? How long will you let your pretty—”

“ _ Light Spinner. _ ”

“That’s not my name, Micah.”

Silence.

“Together, we can do this.”

When she comes back to their bed, after she goes on her nightly visits, Catra is sometimes awake, and waiting for her.

“I’m sorry,” Adora apologizes.

“I love you,” Catra says, her hands shaking only a little as she pulls Adora against her.

“I love you, too.”

A week later, and another slimy, cold presence appears behind her as she is wiping the sweat from her brow.

“I need your help.”

Adora hesitates.

“To heal Light Spinner, I need your help.”

“What do you need me to do?”

This time, it is Micah’s turn to hesitate.

“My body can’t take the magical energy from all six of the runestones simultaneously.”

_ It would tear a person apart _ , Adora remembers, and her blood goes cold.

The shadows beneath Micah writhe, and he has never looked so much like Shadow Weaver.

But.

She agreed once.

And to heal Shadow Weaver?

Adora doesn’t even hesitate.

She opens her mouth, and—

“I need to borrow your sword.”

Two days later.

“Dad, no.”

“Glimmer, honey, please. Trust me, we need her help to save your mother.”

“I don’t want to lose my dad along with my mom!”

Micah kneels before Glimmer, taking her hands in his.

“Glimmer, I promise. I’ve done all the research, it’s perfectly safe.”

Glimmer hesitates, and then finally nods.

Micah kisses her on the forehead.

“What if I told you I would help you. Would that make you stop this lunacy?”

“Casta, even if you would, I can’t leave her like this. Don’t you remember who she used to be?”

Castaspella grits her teeth.

“This is insane, you’ll never survive,” she says, hand tight on his arm. “I don’t want to lose my brother again.”

“Please, Casta. Trust me.”

Castaspella hesitates.

She grits her teeth.

“Not alone,” she says.

The tightness in Micah’s face loosens, and slowly, he smiles.

He holds his hand out, and Castaspella takes it.

He turns to Adora.

He smiles.

“Can I borrow your sword?” he asks, hand extended out towards her.

Adora’s sword materializes in her hand, and she holds it for a moment, hesitating.

She turns to Glimmer, and Glimmer’s face crumples as she nods.

She sets the hilt in Micah’s waiting hand, and the blade crashes into the ground between them.

Micah stares at the sword he cannot lift, blinking, and then he smiles.

“I guess I need you to place it for me,” he says, laughing.

Adora takes it, and walks into the massive intricately drawn magic circle, Shadow Weaver knelt at its center, her face and body criss-crossed with dozens of magic symbols.

“Hello, Adora,” she says, and her lips twist in what is almost a smile.

Adora turns her sword over, and drives it into the stone.

She looks down at the runic circle all around her, a maze that should have no meaning to her, but she can read it, all the same.

Then, without hesitation, she stands between her sword and Shadow Weaver, extends her hand, and—

“Adora, no!”

“ _ Restore what has been lost. _ ”

The magic circle around her flares to life, and the magic of the whole world flows through her. It is a thousand suns, hot enough for Adora to feel it even through She-Ra’s iron skin.

The magic flows from the six glyphs representing the runestones, through the maze, into her sword, up through her, then through the runes written on Shadow Weaver’s body, before falling back into the maze, and back to the six glyphs representing the runestones.

As it passes through her, Adora spins her own love for Shadow Weaver into the flow, and the runes on Shadow Weaver’s skin explode into light.

Shadow Weaver tenses against it, gritting her teeth and clenching her eyes closed—

But whatever she’s waiting for doesn’t come.

She slowly opens her eyes and looks at Adora, surrounded by six differents colors of lights, spinning around her arms, and then, even slower, lowers her gaze to her hands, where lines of light spin between them of their own accord.

She sucks in her breath, and then her face crumples and she begins to weep.

The light fades. The runes on Shadow Weaver’s face fade into her scars, the runes all around them into the stone.

Catra crashes into Adora at speed, her hands desperate and terrified against Adora’s face—

“You stupid self-sacrificing idiot.”

“It didn’t even hurt,” Adora says.

Catra’s fingers are bruising against her face as Catra slams their lips into each other.

“You’re still a stupid, self-sacrificing idiot.”

“Adora!” Glimmer says, her arms circling Adora from behind. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she says, as she is swarmed on all sides.

Micah is last.

“How are you—”

His voice drifts off, as his gaze falls to the ground around them.

Adora lowers her gaze, and finds that a full third of the runes remain on the ground, unused.

Micah takes a breath, and sighs.

“She-Ra,” he says, a bit like a curse. “You shouldn’t have had to do that,” he says. “That was dangerous.”

_ It would have been dangerous for you, too _ , she doesn’t say.

_ If I did it, no one else could have got hurt, doing something I could do _ , she doesn’t say.

Instead, she says—

“I wanted to be the one to do it.”

Behind her, for the first time in thirty years, light spins around Shadow Weaver’s hands as she weeps.

Two nights later, Catra shakes her awake, and says, “Come with me?”

Together, they walk the dark halls of the palace until they come upon a window overlooking Shadow Weaver’s garden.

They look down, upon Shadow Weaver not pruning her garden.

Not weaving shadows.

They look down upon Shadow Weaver spinning light in the air above her, the light illuminating a smile on her scarred face.

“No, no, no I can’t do this.”

And then they leave, Catra’s hand tight in Adora’s.

Another night, after Entrapta and Hordak have been called to Brightmoon, after they’ve started drawing test circles in the throne room, Adora wakes to a crying Catra’s arms around her.

“Catra,” Adora says. “Catra, what’s wrong?”

Catra shakes her head against Adora, so Adora wraps Catra in her arms.

After Catra has stopped crying, after Adora thinks Catra has fallen asleep, she says.

“She apologized.”

Adora stares up at the ceiling above them. Looks down at Catra in her arms.

She does not ask who  _ she _ is.

“She said she was sorry,” Catra continues, not done. “Like that—”

Catra makes a choked sob.

“Like that changes anything.”

After the circles have been drawn, the circles have been tested, and Shadow Weaver’s  _ do you think you can stop her _ has Adora participating in the final ritual, there is a knock on Adora’s door.

Adora opens it, and finds Shadow Weaver is waiting for her on the other side.

“Hello, Adora,” she says.

It is the first time she has sought Adora out, since the first day.

“Shadow Weaver,” Adora says, her gaze sliding down and away from Shadow Weaver’s.

The room behind Adora is empty.

They are alone.

After a long moment, Adora steps back, and Shadow Weaver steps into the room.

“I need your help,” Shadow Weaver says, once the door is closed behind her.

Shadow Weaver has apologized to Catra.

She has not apologized to Adora.

Adora understands, just a little, some of the jealousy Catra felt towards her when they were children.

Because Shadow Weaver is poison.

Adora nods, not trusting herself to speak.

“There is—”

Shadow Weaver hesitates.

Shadows writhe beneath her as she raises a hand to her face.

“There is something inside of me.” She hesitates, then continues. “I can’t—” she digs her hands into her hair, and the shadows all around them writhe. “I can’t trust my own thoughts.” She looks up into Adora’s eyes, and for a moment, Adora sees the old Shadow Weaver there, hard and cruel and pitiless. “I’m going to hurt—”

The shadows writhe and flash.

“I want to hurt Catra again I want to drive you apart I want you to leave you with nothing left but me I want—”

Shadow Weaver takes a shaky breath, and tiny loops of light dance around her fingers.

The shadows around them still.

She closes her eyes, smooths her face, straightens her back.

She opens her eyes, and she is Shadow Weaver again, not this—

Uncertain, ranting stranger.

“I want you to burn the shadows out of me, Adora.”

“Apologize,” Adora finds herself saying.

Shadow Weaver blinks.

“To you?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“But I always did my best for you.”

Shadow Weavers words take like ash in Adora’s mouth, and she closes her eyes.

Adora conjures her sword into her hand, and then sets it aside.

She takes Shadow Weaver’s face in her hands, and, just as she did, a year ago, to Hordak Prime, pours every ounce of love she’s got into Shadow Weaver.

She releases Shadow Weaver’s face, and Light Spinner crumbles to her feet.

Slowly, Light Spinner raises her gaze to meet Adora’s, and the slits Adora has seen there all her life are gone.

Then, slowly, Light Spinner’s face contorts in horror.

“Oh, Gods,” she says. “Oh, Gods, what have I done.”

She takes Adora’s hands in hers.

“Adora, I’m so—”

“It’s too late,” Adora says, pulling her hands from Light Spinner’s. “It doesn’t mean anything, coming from you.”

Light Spinner stares at her, and her face crumples.

She buries her face in her hands, and screams.

Adora closes her eyes against the sound, and looks away.

A couple days later, a couple days before the stars align, Adora finds herself walking the halls of the East Wing.

She arrives at the window above Shadow Weaver’s garden, and looks down to find it gone.

In it’s a place a garden of pinks and white and light purples, and within it—

A stranger.

Light Spinner.

Light Spinner raises her face to Adora, smiles a sad smile, and Adora closes her eyes, and looks away.

The day arrives.

The stars align.

Adora steps into the magic circle.

“Are you ready?”

Adora looks at Light Spinner’s face.

Eyes she doesn’t know in a face she’s never been able to forget.

“Yes,” she says, and closes her hand around She-Ra’s sword.

Along the four points of the compass rose are Glimmer, Micah, Castaspella, and Light Spinner.

Waiting outside the circle are Catra, Bow, Entrapta, and Hordak.

“Everyone ready?”

Micah confirms.

Everyone is ready.

The circle alights, all of the magic of the world pours into Adora, warm against her iron skin, and Adora lifts her sword—

And cuts a hole in the universe.

The hole bellows and screams and struggles, straining at its bonds, hungry to eat the whole world, but the circle holds strong.

Within the cut in the universe, almost within reach, hangs Angella.

Slowly, Angella’s face turns to face Adora, and she smiles a sad smile.

“Not this again,” she says.

“Queen Angella,” Adora says, reaching out to her.

“No,” Angella says, shaking her head, not moving. “I can’t—”

Her eyes flick over Adora’s shoulder, to wear Micah is knelt behind her, on the South Star.

“I can’t lose you all again.”

“Queen Angella you won’t, take my hand—”

Angella closes her eyes, and presses her lips together.

“Trust me, please!”

Angella shakes her head.

“Honey, please, don’t make me live without you.”

Angella’s spine stiffens at Micah’s words.

“Mom! Mom, I can’t do this alone!”

Angella’s eyes open, and she starts to cry.

“Angella!”

“Mom!”

“Please,” Adora says, extending her hand.

“What’s one more time,” Angella says, and she reaches for Adora.

Adora’s hand closes around Angella’s, and she pulls her from the rift.

Angella steps out onto the throne room floor, and Adora drives her sword into the diamond at her feet, grabs both edges of the tear, and heaves it closed.

It struggles and pulls against her, but she has the power of the whole damn world inside of her, and it cannot stop her.

She clasps her hands closed, interlaces her fingers, and she thinks of everything she’s ever loved in the world.

The universe seals around her hands, and it’s over.

The magic circle vanishes into the polished tile of the throne room, and everyone surges around Angella while she says—

“How long, this time?”

One night, not long after has Angella has returned.

Before she has accepted that this world is real, and not another hallucination of that space between dimensions.

Adora wakes up alone.

She walks the halls, finds her way to the East Wing.

Looks down upon Light Spinner’s garden.

There she finds Light Spinner, and, on the hedge, back stiff, tail curled tightly around her legs, Catra.

Adora takes in a sharp breath, and Catra’s ears twitch as she catches it.

Catra’s eyes dart up, meet hers, and Light Spinner, for once, doesn’t notice, crouched down before a bush of white and pink.

Catra raises her hand to Adora, and Adora shakes her head, and looks away.

“I have to admit,” says a voice behind her, quiet and confident and oh so regal. “This is new.”

Adora turns to face Angella, who looks like she hasn’t slept in a year, as she spreads her hands across the balcony and looks down upon the garden below her.

Adora hesitates, and then turns back. Stands next to Angella at the balcony.

Light Spinner lifts her gaze to them, smiling briefly at Adora, not smiling at all at Angella before turning to where Catra sits on the hedge.

Catra’s face is tortured, as she tries and fails to pull her gaze from Angella’s.

Light Spinner speaks to her, in tones too low for Adora to hear, and Catra pulls her gaze away from Angella like it physically pains her.

“My daughter has forgiven my murderer,” Angella says, “my husband has forgiven his master, who tried to kill us both, and the whole world seems to have forgiven Hordak, who tried to kill us all.”

“It was… complicated,” Adora offers. “Lots of stuff happened.”

“So they tell me.”

There is a moment of silence.

“Have you forgiven her?” Angella asks, and Adora grimaces.

“Catra?” Adora asks, playing dumb.

“No.”

Adora falls silent.

“What is there to forgive?” Adora asks, tightening her hands on the railing beneath her hands. “Light Spinner never did anything to me.”

Angella’s answering silence is deafening.

“No,” Angella finally says. “I suppose she didn’t.”

They stand there in silence, as Adora gathers herself.

Finally, Angella turns away from the balcony, back towards the empty hallways of the palace that is her palace that she doesn’t know.

“What a strange dream,” Angella says.

Micah, Bow, and Glimmer have tried and failed to convince Angella that this is real.

Not another dream conjured by that space between the universes.

Adora doubts she can do a better job than they have, but she can’t help but reach out, and catch Angella’s hand as she leaves.

Angella stops, and turns back to Adora, one elegant eyebrow raised.

“Yes, Adora?”

Adora curls her fingers around She-Ra’s sword in her palm, and then pours all of the love she has within her into Angella through their joined hands.

When it is done, Adora is Adora once more, and Angella’s hand is gone from hers.

“Where did you learn that?” Angella asks, voice shaking.

Adora shrugs.

“I don’t know,” she says, honestly. “I just did. Did it help?”

Angella swallows heavily, and lifts her shaking hand to her face.

She shakes her head.

“I don’t know.”

Another night, after Angella has told Glimmer and Micah that she believes them, that she believes that she is no longer trapped in a dream, from which she has no escape, Adora wakes up alone.

She finds Catra standing in the balcony over Light Spinner’s balcony, hidden in the shadows.

She holds her hand out to Adora as she approaches, and Adora takes it.

They hold each other, in the darkness of balcony, looking down upon Light Spinner, pruning the last of the black vines no one else had managed to remove, out of her garden.

Catra holds Adora as she cries.

Another night, in which Adora does not wake up alone.

After Angella has taken back her throne, told her family that she believes them, and the bags that haven’t left Glimmer’s eyes since her coronation have finally started to fade.

When Adora looks down upon Light Spinner’s, she finds that Light Spinner is not alone.

“Queen,” Light Spinner says. 

“Shadow Weaver.”

“To what do I owe the honor?”

“You died.”

Silence.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember it?”

Light Spinner straightens from her bush of white-pink roses.

She faces Angella.

“Every moment.”

Silence.

“Tell me, Queen.” Light Spinner says, her voice low and cold and not very much like  _ Light Spinner _ at all. “What is the longest one of your ‘dreams’ lasted?”

Silence.

Angella rustles her wings.

“Two hundred and thirty-four years.”

Adora’s blood runs cold, and she must make some noise, because both pairs of eyes rise up to meet her.

She staggers back from the balcony, and Light Spinner speaks again.

“I was blown into every shadow on Etheria. Two hundred and twenty three days, I watched the world with a million eyes, dying with every light, and being reborn with every new shadow.”

“How do you know,” Angella asks, her voice almost too quiet for Adora to here, but not quite, “you haven’t gone mad?”

“I don’t.”

Silence.

“Tell me, Queen,” Light Spinner says in Shadow Weaver’s voice. “How do you?”

Silence.

Another night, and Adora awakens with Catra beside her.

Adora leans over, and kisses Catra’s lips.

“Adora?”

“Sorry,” Adora says, pushing herself from the bed, settling the covers back around Catra. “I’ll be right back.”

Catra mewls at her loss, but sleep takes her before Adora has left the room.

The halls feel longer, darker, tonight, despite the full moon.

She arrives at Light Spinner’s garden, and looks down upon Light Spinner, on her hands and knees in the dirt.

She hesitates.

Looks down the long, dark hallway to the room where Catra waits for her, and then back down to the garden she doesn’t recognize below her.

She slips over the balcony railing, and drops to the garden below.

She lands in the shadow of the balcony, and stands there, her feet rooted to the earth, as Light Spinner stands.

Turns towards her.

“Hello, Adora,” she says, and her voice is so, so familiar.

“Light Spinner,” Adora says.

“No,” Light Spinner says.

Something cold settles in Adora’s gut.

The grass under Light Spinner’s feet crunches as she walks towards Adora.

“You deserved better than me,” Light Spinner says, still coming closer and closer and— “But I was what you got.”

Closer and closer and—

“The person who hurt you, the person who tried to drive you and Catra apart, the person who tried to erase your memories and torture your friends and burn the whole world to ashes, that was me.”

Light Spinner comes to a stop, a couple feet away from Adora, in the moonlight while Adora is in the shadows.

“Just because I don’t have the shadows within me anymore doesn’t change any of that. I did it. I did it and I didn’t even realize what I did to you was wrong.”

She smiles, sadly, like she had that night, before Angella came back, when Adora couldn’t stand that look on a stranger’s face.

“I’m not asking you to forgive me.”

Adora feels tears begin to pool in the corners of her eyes.

“But I am asking that you recognize me.”

Adora clenches her eyes closed against them, and squeezes them down her cheek.

“My name,” the woman before her declares, “is Shadow Weaver.”

She takes a step closer to Adora, then another.

Until she’s nothing but a shadow on a shadow.

“And I’m so, so sorry. For everything I did.”

Adora weeps.

Shadow Weaver takes one last step, and Adora grabs her and crushes her to her chest.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Adora says, crying into her shoulder. “I was so scared that I’d lost you.”

“No,” Shadow Weaver says, and her voice is soft like Adora had always dreamed of it being. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not enough.”

Slowly, hesitantly, Shadow Weaver’s hands come up behind Adora.

“I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Light Spinner deserved better. I don’t think Shadow Weaver deserved better, but I think Light Spinner did. (I say, making a distinction without a difference.)
> 
> I was hoping that we could see Shadow Weaver/Light Spinner cured of whatever the hell The Spell of Obtainment did to her, and try to make amends for what she did under its influence. We didn't get that in canon, so this is me, writing it for myself.
> 
> I was also pretty surprised we didn't see canon rescue Angella. Unfortunately for her, she's stuck with me. I was a lot less nice about it than canon would have been.


End file.
